Twitter is testing a way to watch YouTube videos directly from your timeline. Usually, if someone includes a YouTube link in a tweet, you will link to YouTube, which can be frustrating if you do not want to leave Twitter to watch the video. This new feature, which is being tested on iOS today, means you will not be sent from Twitter, which will make it easier to watch a video and then browse further if you prefer.
Twitter shared how the feature works in a GIF:
As of today on iOS, we are testing a way to watch YouTube videos directly in your Home timeline, without leaving the conversation on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/V4qzMJMEBs
– Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) 18 March 2021
The test will be available to a very small group of users in Canada, the US, Japan and Saudi Arabia, Twitter said in a statement shared with The edge after we first published this story.
“The current test on iOS will be a four-week experiment,” a Twitter spokesman said. We plan to investigate the results and will scale accordingly. ”
This new test comes along with two others announced last week for iOS and Android, which are meant to improve the sharing and viewing of media on the social network. One test adds a preview of ‘what you see is what you get’ to the composer of the tweet, which means that images appear on your timeline as when you compose a tweet. The company is also testing ways to Upload and view 4K images on cell phone.
Update March 18, 14:56 ET: Added information from Twitter.